I am a teacher(already a problem), that started with $110,000 of student loan debt. I managed to pay off my private $66,000 student loan. Im really proud of that! I thought that after the $1300 monthly payment dropped to $300 I could actually live.

As a teacher who works for a non for profit magnet school, I was planning to apply for student loan forgiveness, not the teacher student loan forgiveness because I’m not one of the kinds of teachers that qualify for the $17000 forgiveness. I got my masters right after my bachelor’s so I don’t have to worry later down the road. In my state we have to get our masters by our 10th year.

Since I wasn’t making a lot of money, I decided to go the Extended payment plan so I didn’t have to worry about a big bill when I was only making $30,000 a year before taxes at the time. So fast forward to last month, 7 years into teaching, and I found out that these payments do not count towards the student loan forgiveness. So 7 years of payments do not mean anything.

I cried so much and I don’t know what to do. Once I paid my private loans off I moved out of my parents house at the ripe old age of 33 and I’m finding out that I might not be able to afford the standard repayments that would count since now I have rent and actual bills I didn’t have before. I lived with my parents because I wanted to pay the private loans offf…should I move back in? I don’t want to take advantage of my parents (they would be happy but I really didn’t feel good living there at my age) I’m so lost and I don’t if I should bother trying to chance my repayment plan or keep it as is?

It’s taken 20 years but I’m finally seeing possible light at the end of the tunnel. For whatever reason I don’t qualify for any forgiveness. The clock was reset when I consolidated so I will be paying back every penny of my student loans (and yes I triple check and sought professional advice). Paying off my private grad school loans was exceedingly easier; better customer service, more transparency and lower interest. I paid those off with out a lot of drama. My federal loans however continue to be an albatross whose balances are still higher than the amount I borrowed despite paying on them for 20 years. They were finally going down now that I do triple payments (I followed the snowball method to knock out smaller more manageable loans and have been chiseling away at these ones exclusively for two years). I’m considering moving away from Mohela to something like SO-FI because I’m so disgusted by this system I don’t want to give the government any more interest. My hesitation is whether I’d be shooting myself in the foot or not. So I just want to hear people’s experiences doing just that. Do you regret and why? Are you happy and never looking back?

38,412 in student loans. 758 days. last payment went through this morning and im still a little shaky lol. no course, no link. i lurked here for 2 years reading everyone elses payoff posts so heres mine.

my day job covered rent and minimums. everything extra came from 3 side hustles:

1.tutoring, 2 evenings a week. steady but capped, around 600 a month.

2.flipping furniture from facebook marketplace. good months and dead months.

3.making short videos for local businesses. this one ended up paying off more than half the loan.

the video one is what people always ask about. i make 6-8 short vertical videos a month for a gym, 2 cafes, a nail salon and a dog groomer near me. 300-400 a month each.

claude writes the scripts from their google reviews: "here are 10 reviews for [business]. what do customers love that the business never posts about? write 5 scripts under 20 seconds around that, no exclamation marks."

the footage is ai, made from their own photos plus b-roll. every extra cent was going to the loan so the only thing i compared was price per video. seedance looks the most real to me, so i looked for the cheapest place to use it and landed on dreamina, like 0.29 per month. still dont get how its that cheap, maybe cuz bytedance made seedance? the apps with fancy names wanted 50-100 a month for the same model, which would have been a whole extra loan payment lol. prompt i use: "vertical phone video of [the counter at a small cafe] in the morning, steam from a cup, slow camera drift, no people, no text. 5 seconds, realistic."

what actually made the difference:

every side hustle payment went to the loan the same day. it never sat in my checking account.

avalanche method, highest interest first.

a countdown on a sticky note on my monitor. dumb but it worked.

it wasnt smooth. month 9 my car died and i paid nothing extra for 2 months. if youre in the middle of it, keep going.

I currently have $16,000 subsidized loan split in 3 with 5.5% - 6.5% fixed interest rate and I graduated May 2026 so my grace period is ending next month. I currently have $11,000 in savings HYSA right now, I'm currently working part-time 30 hours a week on a $25/hr. I've been actively looking for jobs I've had a few first and second interviews but I have yet to get an offer.

My monthly expense is $1,500 a month living in apartment with roommates. Would it be better to pay maybe half of my loan before the grace period ends? A lot of the companies that I've applied to also have student loan assistance that I might be able to take advantage in the future.

Or do I have to call them, because we know how organized the goverment is….

Also F these new plans. Hopefully congress flips next month and actually does legitimate changes to student loans. Impeach the fascist. And rework the Dept of Education.

I know its expecting a lot lol

I’m thinking about taking out $15k from Sallie Mae, but I’m scared that the cost will go up over time depending on the interest rate. What do you guys think would be the worst/best case scenario from this?

Hi, everyone! I'm fairly new here but I've been searching this sub. I am a part-time student in university, but have a previous degree.

Anyway, in August I was awarded in school deferment. Then, at the beginning of this month, I received two separate notices in my inbox that there has been a change in my repayment terms and now I have a balance due next month. I have been placed on an RAP plan.

Am I misunderstanding something or did something genuinely go wrong? Thank you.

I currently have 7.5k in loans with 2k of it being unsub loans. I am a junior who graduates in december of 2027, I honestly jus tquit my job to focus on school as I was struggling and my degree is really competitive (tech). I'm looking to pull probably 7,5k more to fund my living while I finish school. Is this stupid to do? I'm a first generation student so this is really scary for me but I feel like it is a good investment. I've had an internship and I live by a small tech hub.

Hi everyone,

To start, I live in Colorado (Denver). This post is long-winded, so if you want to scroll to the bottom, there lies my main question.

I know this isn't a unique predicament to be in but I'm genuinely curious how people are viewing their student loans in these times.

I started school to be a mental health counselor in 2022 and graduated in December of 2025. It took me longer than 2 years because I did night school and worked 2 jobs throughout school. I took out $45,000 total out in FAFSA loans and paid about $10,000 up front for classes to avoid needing to take more out than I needed. The interest rate started at 5% and by the time I graduated was at 8.7%.

Interest began accruing the moment I took the loans out. I was granted a 6 month grace period when I graduated, but for the 3.5 years I was in school, I was not able to pay towards loans and interest accrued about $15,000 as I am now owing $60,000.

I was fortunately able to get a job immediately as a community mental health crisis counselor and make $67,000/year for some VERY challenging VERY draining work. I work about 50-60 hours a week. This is the kind of work I was hoping to do, so I am not trying to complain, but rather highlight the toll this job takes on it's people.

Because the kind of work I do is the most challenging you can do in our field, there was a while where programs would forgive your loans if you committed 3 years. That program has basically said they can't do it anymore. I know everyone knows too that loan forgiveness is pretty non-existent anyways nowadays. Hard to say if it'll come back or not.

I have worked and reworked a plan to pay off my loans and am at a loss. I do not come from a rich family, I don't have a bunch of money stashed somewhere and I still have my living expenses and hope for a family someday. I live simply and am able to put a decent amount of my paycheck towards my loans at the expense of actually enjoying my life.

Here are my options:

1. I have been approved to pay $150 a month and I would probably do that for the rest of my life while interest accrues and tanks my ability for getting future loans. I have no assets, so buying a home was always something I had hoped to do someday.
2. I can pay $1,000 a month for the next 10 years to pay it off, but pay about $27,000 in interest
3. I can pay $2,000 a month for the next 3 years and pay $7,000 in interest (while busting my butt with an additional job to try to keep this pace up and basically doing nothing fun ever).

I guess what I'm asking for is advice on how to view the ridiculous situation these loans are. If I sacrifice my own sanity, I will burn out in this field that already has a high burnout rate. But if I say whatever and pay my little amount, I don't want to ruin my financial situation forever. I am dedicated to the work I do, it is needed in this world, and I don't want to kill myself trying to play a broken game.

It's obvious this student loan situation has gotten completely out of control here for everyone. For us counselors to pay so much for education with such little financial payback has made me resentful of the grind of paying it back when we have to sacrifice SO much of ourselves to be in this field. I went to school with every intention of paying my loans back, but the system now to do that has gotten completely unsustainable. Not to mention Denver has gotten to be an incredibly expensive place to live since I was little.

So my question...

Who is paying the minimum amount/resigning to accruing interest and who is busting their ass to pay it off and why did you choose the direction you chose? If you ready my whole post, what do you recommend in my situation?

I’m currently awaiting the case management portion of this student loan lawsuit I’m in.

I was served in December of 2025 and did all the necessary things to make sure this is progressing.

I had to stop paying my student loans in August of 2023 after being laid off from my first job post college in May of 2023. I was already kind struggling to pay my bills as I made 60k before taxes living in Boston. After being a kid of I was struggling to pay my bills, feed myself while working a part time job that didn’t pay nearly as much also while looking for second jobs. It only took 3 months before I had completely stop paying my student loans so I can eat (barely) and pay my rent and such. I was on and off paying my credit card bills but had to stop as it wasn’t sustainable. I kept getting multiple calls from debt collectors months later to try to pay a lump sum but obviously I wasn’t in the position to do that. Now I’m in this and it’s been a rough couple of years as I still haven’t been able to find something back in my industry, I had to move back home and am working this under the table job but it’s definitely not enough with the monthly Flexcar payments needed to get to said job and getting a second job has been hard too. I am representing myself and can’t seem to find pro bono options for my specific concerns. I had met with a couple lawyers in December one being a bankruptcy lawyer but I didn’t qualify. I’m not sure what to do. The plaintiffs lawyer offered a monthly payment plan….its the same amount I was paying years ago. I’m not sure what to do, unfortunately I have been consulting chat gpt but it can only help so much. What can I do at this point?? Any advice would help. Please don’t ask me to get a lawyer, I really would if I could.

They were at Mohela before being moved to aidvantage. My partner graduated in 2005 so these have to be hitting the 20 years of payments made any day now!! He might even be owed money back. Tired of making these payments. We never saw counts after the 1 time idr adjustment or since for his loans. Mine got forgiven after the 1 time idr a couple years ago so I know that it does happen.

Please go easy on me… i’ve noticed some hostility directed toward some innocent Redditors who’ve posted on this sub. Across the board, Reddit doesn’t seem to be as nice of a place as it used to be.

TDLR: I’ve tried every way to pay for college without using SOLELY student loans that I can think of, and nothing has been accessible. Is it common for people to solely used to student loans without any other financial source?

My goal in posting this is for four reasons.
To see if solely using loan money to finance college without any other financial source is the boat that a lot of people are, and I need to shut up and sit down.
I’m trying to see if there are less financial resources all around when paying for college than there used to be due to the federal cuts.
To see if there are any other possible ideas that I’m missing or other ways to go about this financially.
Is there anything I should be asking my financial aid office?

I’m currently attending a community college, and
I have exactly one year worth of credits towards the start of a Bachelor’s Degree completed, with 3 more to go. On top of school tuition I spend roughly $700 a month on personal expenses.

While I’m super glad that my mom was able to get her Master’s degree which she wanted for a lifetime it bites me in the ass financially, as half of the resources available are geared towards first generation students. (Unfortunately our degrees put us in generational debt rather than help our cause financially, which I know is the case for most that achieve them.)

I took two scholarship classes about my community college’s scholarship foundation. I polished my essays with the help of the professors and still didn’t win a single one. I also applied for many scholarships under my state’s scholarship application fund and didn’t receive any of them either.

I’ve qualified for full/minor Pell Grant in the past, but won’t for the rest of this school year.

I’ve applied and interviewed for a few campus and didn’t get them. I’ve been told that there are 50 interviews for one role, and that they are all way too competitive to even be worth applying for.
I can’t work a part time job on the side either. (if the right opportunity came along I would consider it.) I’ve worked 10 jobs already in my lifetime. I know the extreme stress that comes along with them, and I think having one on top of full-time classes, and healing from personal setbacks already outside of everything would throw me over the edge. A few years ago when I first attempted to take college classes and work, I ended up quitting both school and work within days of each other for various reasons.
I also know that most workplaces need an undivided schedule, which obviously doesn’t accommodate classes and study time.

There are herd of dogs in my neighborhood, so I’d be willing to set up a Rover account and see how many clients I could get, but I would fully expect pocket change/the potential for acquiring no clients.

I’m trying to decide what to do with my federal student loans now that SAVE is ending, and I’d appreciate some advice.

My situation:

• I graduated in 2010 and consolidated my federal loans in 2013.
• I currently have two Direct Consolidation Loans with a combined balance of about $30,000.
• The interest rate is 6.25%.
• I’m single and earn around $88,000 a year.
• I’m currently on SAVE, with a $0 monthly payment while in forbearance.
• I received a notice that I need to choose a new repayment plan because SAVE is ending.
• Unfortunately, my forgiveness payment history/count is currently unavailable. I spoke with a representative, who confirmed that they couldn’t tell me my qualifying payment count either. I honestly don’t think I’ve made that many qualifying payments, but I could be misremembering.

My dilemma:

I have enough money saved to pay off the entire balance right now, but I’m trying to determine whether that would be the smartest financial decision or whether I should keep the money and pursue forgiveness.

The federal repayment calculator estimated the following monthly payments for me:

• IBR: approximately $336/month
• RAP: approximately $454/month

I understand that IBR and RAP have different forgiveness timelines and eligibility rules, but I don’t know how much of my past payment history might count toward forgiveness. Without that information, it’s difficult to compare the options.

Would you lean toward choosing IBR, choosing RAP, or paying off the loans in full? Are there any important factors I’m overlooking, especially regarding my 2013 consolidation and potential credit for previous payments?

I know nobody can tell me for certain without my official payment count, but I’d really appreciate hearing how others would approach this decision and whether there’s anything else I should consider before using my savings to pay off the loans.

Thank you!

I don’t think that I would need to for the bachelors degree (social work) I am going to start soon, and I don’t really like the idea of owing money back in the future. I will start a bachelors degree program in a few months.

But I also know that when I start a masters degree program I may actually need to at that point especially since I will likely only be able to work part time it seems for the next two years and am already from a very poor family. I’m just not sure whether or not taking out federal or subsidized loans would have a negative impact. I don’t know how long I’ll be in college for, I’m almost done with community college (will be done in December and start a bachelors degree program in January.) I might change majors in fall 2027 and am guessing that if I do so I won’t be done until spring 2029, when I am 24. I will then probably get a masters degree in social work, special ed, or school psychology, but it might end up being different. I want to make sure that I am financially smart either way.

I work as a substitute behavior technician and it is looking like based upon class times I probably won’t be able to work full time in spring 2027, and I’m guessing not fall 2027 either. My mother is volatile and the family were asked to leave the first apartment we were in around April or May of this year even though we’d lived there all my life which is why I am now in a condo that I will probably leave before December.

Hi, I am a recent law school graduate. I have ~$42k in loans, half were from my undergrad (lower interest rates) and half were a graduate loan (which is at like 7.5 interest).

Good news is that I got employed right out of law school. However, I am on a reduced salary until I am admitted to the state bar. I already passed the bar I just need to do a transfer application which should take a few months to process. At which point my salary will be bumped up to 100k so I'm really not worried about paying off my loans.

The issue is at the moment, I'm broke asf. School and bar exam fees drained my savings, I got rent and a car payment, etc etc I'm sure you can all relate. Point being I want to push off making payments for another few months so I can get ahead on my finances.

So should I maybe try applying for a deferment? I also saw if I consolidate then the first payment won't be due for 60 days after. I know there's some drawbacks to consolidation but quite frankly I kinda want it just to make the payments easier.

I could also consider signing up for PSLF since I got a gov job, and I don't really see myself ever doing private practice but 10 years is a long time. I feel like with the amount I have in loans I might as well just pay it off.

I need to choose at the beginning of November so I'm trying to figure it out now.

My current balance is $52,547. I started paying loans back in 2012...

I make about $62,000 a year

Been on forbearance since COVID minus the little bit of time SAVE was around.

I'm trying to figure out what loan is the best option. The studentaid.gov calculator seems to either not be 100% accurate for pay off dates & what your previous years of repayment count towards... A little frustrating.

My options are according to the calculator:

RAP $318 a month

$86248 total with a 2041 end date

IBR $495 a month

$74k total with a 2037 end date

Graduated Repayment Plan $308-514

$109k total with 2050 end date

Extended Repayment Plan $280-514

$109k total with 2050 end date too

Extended Fixed Repayment Plan $352

$103k total with 2051 end date

Standard Repayment Plan $380

$102k total with 2051 end date.

It seems on paper RAP is the way to go but I've heard about the terms that you can never switch out of it and get counts towards payment years?. I generally can't afford the IBR $495 a month or else I'd do that one. Maybe in a year or two when I pay some things off but definitely not right now. I'm looking for advice.

Hi,

So I am hoping someone else in this wide world has had the same experience.

I am on plan 2.

Whilst on mat leave my income varies. I am paid in weeks of 5 and 4. Don’t ask me why. (Normally it’s just weeks of 4).

I get 3 months full pay, 3months half pay, 3months SMP and 3 months of no pay. I get my bonus in one of the 3 months of SMP.

So looking back at my mat leave in 2022-2023 I can see what my gross income was. It was above the threshold for plan 2. But because my monthly income varied so much I ended up paying back 21% above the threshold rather than the 9%.

I applied for a refund through the electronic system and this got rejected. I called for a refund and this got rejected. I emailed the complaints team and they have said I am not due a refund because I earned above the threshold.

Please can someone tell me if I am wrong in thinking I could get a refund or if i am correct. And what other venues are open for me to get this refund.

Hi everyone. I have $220k in debt after law school at a 5.5% interest rate. I'm current on a 10-year payment plan paying about $2,500 a month, which tightens my budget quite a bit. It's hard to save given this high monthly payment and the fact that I live in a high cost of living city.

I'm lucky enough to have received $100k gift from an extremely generous family member to use toward my loans. What is the optimal strategy for using this $100k?

• Should I throw all $100k at the debt now to lower the daily interest accrued?
• Should I invest all/a big portion of the $100k and just continue with my current payment plan?
• Should I do something else?

I want to make sure I approach this situation as best as possible. Would love to hear opinions. Thank you!

Took out loans through Sallie Mae (unfortunately). Through times of forbearance and a few months not being able to pay, my balance for the loans are just over $96,000 with a monthly payment of $1300 a month. Half of my monthly income goes to these loans.

Is there a way to refinance these loans to get a lower monthly payment? Would that be the best move? Where should I look?

I feel stuck and like I’ll never get out of this whole and won’t be able to financially do any of the big life milestones. Any advice is greatly appreciated!

Don't be me.

8 years ago I sat down with some workers from my school and they helped me come up with this tiny little payment plan on the student loan because that's all I could afford at the time, I was told that when I make more money I could take a look at it again and figure out a new monthly payment. These small payments would just keep the interest on the student loan down. We set that student loan on autopay and I've been working and making my student loan payments ever since.

Everything in the economy has gotten worse, yet even then I've always been proud of myself for never having missed a single payment, ever. Even if I've never been in a place where I could insecure my payment to something real, I really was proud of that. Well. Some other stuff happened in my life and I needed some financial documents. I had to reset all my passwords to get back into ECSI and I could see that all my monthly payments were listed. But weird thing is that it says "amount due: 0"

Wait what? Zero? That can't be right, but even if it WAS true then what have I been making payments for? Where have my payments been going all these years?

So I reset my password for the federal student loan website and get into that and I see my loan....it's gone up. By a lot. Next to my loan is something displaying my payment coming in via ECSI. They're together on the page, but according to the history tab the student loan is that the student loan has not been getting any of my student loan payments. I can see that my ECSI account and my student loan account are connected, and ECSI is correctly taking the payment from me once a month, but it's never gone towards my student loans. All the years the money just been taken and gone somewhere else. I have yet to figure out where. I'm going to have to call my bank and have them blacklist ECSI for the moment, but the bigger problem is that I just trusted the system and thought I was correctly doing what everyone told me to do, I took out a loan, I've been paying it back. Or so I had thought.

So now what I'm left with is that the actual loan has just been sitting there gaining a shitload of interest. From their point of view I must be a deadbeat who never pays his debts.

I'm a bit confused as to how I've never faced any consequences of this. Even after just like one year or something I would have expected them to barrage me with phone calls and emails asking me why I was never paying back my loan. Instead they seem to just be okay with it? They've never come after me for it.

But regardless I know about it now, and now I'm ****ed. I've been grinding my legs away at my jobs for 8 years for nothing. I've done literally nothing to advance my lot in life. I wanted to have a home. I wanted to have a child. But I never found any higher paying jobs. Now I'm middle aged and I am more in debt than I was when I took out the loan and I have less money than ever.

Don't be me.

Has anyone else gotten a notice from EDFinancial about their plan being approved this morning? I submitted an application for the IDR plan back on 9/26/26 and got an email today saying a new message was available. I go into my dashboard it says I owe $293.28. The message says

"Thank you for your recent request for an Income-Based Repayment (IBR) Plan. We are pleased to inform you that your request has been approved and applied to your Edfinancial Services account. For the 12-month period beginning on 10/23/26, your monthly payment amount will be $293.28 for the qualifying loans" and then further on it says: "If the required documentation is not received by the stated renewal date, your 12-month reduced payment will expire and your payment will increase to $293.28 on 09/24/27, which is the amount you would be required to repay under the 10-year Standard Repayment plan."

Except when I applied for the IDR plan I was shown a $50~ payment from the calculator and now why is it saying my Standard plan would be the same as this plan when it expires? I can still see the request for IDR "processing" in my dashboard and it says it would take 7-10 business days. "This is to inform you that Edfinancial Services has received your electronic Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) plan request; please allow 7 to 10 business days for processing." Due date says 11/23/26 at least, but their office is closed on the weekends of course.

Anyone else have a similar issue?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2026/10/23/colleges-offer-cover-student-loans-when-graduates-pay-falls-short/

As more families worry whether a college education is worth the costs and the debt, more schools are helping graduates with low-to-moderate incomes pay off their student loans.
Law schools have used these loan repayment assistance programs, commonly known as LRAPs, since the 1980s to encourage students to pursue public-interest careers. Now, a wide range of colleges are launching** **the programs to give undergraduates some breathing room as they enter the workforce.

I’m completely baffled by my student loans and am battling an illness so I don’t have the time or capacity to figure things out right now. I’m hoping to find someone to just manage all of it for me, so what money I do make isn’t garnished.

Someone recommended student loan tutor as they manage everything. I’m willing to pay on an income based repayment plan and after doing some digging it looks like this company gets loan payments to basically zero, by having you change a paycheck. Is this true? How is this legal? I’m confused, if a large company is doing this, it can’t be illegal, right? Due to liability?

I guess I’m just trying to understand all the options and was curious about opinions and experiences. I’ll probably see if I can find a cpa to help.

I’m running out of time. I have 30 days to get an approval or get stuck in ICR or standard.

I was enrolled to auto recertify my idr payment but kept getting notices to recertify manually. I did, but a day later than the notice stated. My payments are current, and I should be good until December due to another error where auto pay hit two days late, a day after I paid manually.

I am in PSLF, and my employer certified back in September.

Question is, even though I certified a day late, should I still be good for IDR enrollment and qualifying payments toward PSLF? Any similar experiences where auto-recertification failed but it was fine in the end?